 Early on when I was formulating and starting to think about like pricing things out for sale and I needed a new like exfoliant treatment and I was in Sephora and I was like, heard good things about drunk elephant, I'm gonna pick up their AHA serum, I forget what it's called and got to check out and she said, all right, that'll be $128. And I was like, okay, thank you, never mind, we'll move from part. And so, and then I went home, it's got a really short ingredients list and it seems well formulated. And then using the pricing that I currently had for all of those ingredients, which I can't speak to whether that is their pricing, but I can't imagine that they are paying more than I was at that point buying such small quantities. It was about a 16,000% markup from the raw ingredients. This is Startup to Storefront. Today's guest is Allie Reed, founder of the skincare company, Stradia Skin. You just heard one of the problems that Allie had with trying to buy skincare products from other companies. Her reading of the label to try and figure out what ingredients were in the product is not an anomaly. She obsessively poured through dermatology journals trying to figure out exactly what the skin needs to look its best and what it doesn't. She blogged about her findings and eventually made her own moisturizer. After many tweaks and even more feedback, this moisturizer hit the market and became the breakout item that put Stradia on the map. But to think this story stops there would be to blemish the journey and the hard-won knowledge and experience that Allie earned along the way. So listen in as we cover everything from her hiring practices and tips, why she doesn't find raising money to be that much of a challenge and how she knew Stradia was going to be more than just a part-time gig when she forced her local USPS to upgrade their mailbox. Now, back to the episode. Welcome to the podcast. Guys, on today's show we have Allie Reed, founder of Stradia. Thanks for joining. Tell us a little bit about what Stradia is. Thank you for having me. Stradia is a skincare company focused on science first, that the idea is that our formulations in former marketing and not the other way around. So really sort of the three pillars of the company are efficacy, you know, skincare should work first and foremost, transparency, so letting you know why we put in the ingredients that are in it, at what percentages and what combinations and accessibility, so keeping it affordable for all skin types, tones, genders, ages, et cetera. And I know a little bit about makeup. We've had some guests on who are kind of experts in this world. The thing that always got me, and it didn't surprise me, but here I live in Los Angeles. I drive by Kylie Jenner's makeup, huge billboard every day. And I'm like, you know, marketing is a big part of this market. I like that you're taking the science approach, but what made you wanna do that? Was it your own struggle? Was it your own confusion in the marketplace? What was kind of the thing that said, you know, I'm gonna take a different approach here? Yeah, I really did. I came at it as a consumer and actually with zero plan to start a skincare company. I grew up as a total tomboy and didn't know anything about makeup, skincare, hair care, fashion, any of it until I started like, this sounds interesting in my 20s and started to learn about it. And so I have a science background and came at it from the same sort of scientific approach that I go with everything. So I really wanted to know like, how does skincare work? You know, what is it actually doing? How can I tell one moisturizer apart from another? And all I really had to go on at that point were like what the labels said in the aisles of CBS, which was not super reliable. So I started doing a ton of research and the information really is accessible out there if you're willing to read a lot of like dermatological journals, which I know not everyone loves to spend their Saturday night that way. But I sort of really started to learn what ingredients did, what were sort of the actual active ingredients that had an effect on your skin and in what combinations do they need to be made? And so I sort of started to learn that. And then the way it started is that, I have a chemistry background and I really missed lab time because I didn't do anything chemistry related in my career. So I used that with the wonders of the internet and taught myself how to formulate skincare so that I knew that this moisturizer had the ingredients I wanted at the levels I wanted. Like I wasn't having to rely on marketing jargon to try to figure it out, I knew for sure. So I was making it for myself and I had a blog and people seemed to really like, I would share the formulas, people really liked it. And so I was like, I've got a couple formulas I'm really proud of, I'll just sell them on the side. It'll be a little side hustle. And so that was kind of how it came about was that I was just trying to solve it for myself and then offload the overflow basically and it just kind of took off from there. I love that. And just to give people context when you started your blog, what year was this? 2015, I wanna say. Okay, so 2015 at that time, I think Instagram is relatively new to the game. And so that's not really a marketing strategy just yet. And so the first few products that you decided to embark on what were they? What were the first three or four or whatever it was? Well, I launched with two products. One has become sort of our flagship product, Liquid Gold, which is this a moisturizer. Great name. That's a great name. Thank you. And I mean, I got the name because it is this like bright orange color, which comes from a sea buckthorn oil, which is like this bright, bright red oil that gives it this color. And so it was formulated out of some studies I'd read about the proportions of ceramides, cholesterol and fatty acids and their ability to sort of reinforce your skin's natural moisture barrier. And I wasn't seeing any products on the market that had that ratio that had been studied. So, you know, built this moisturizer basically around the idea of reinforcing your skin's natural moisture barrier. And then the second one I do have is Rewind, which is a water-based serum, the MAE and niacinamide that's sort of like, you know, meant to rewind the visible effects of aging. So those were the two that I launched with in 2016. And in terms of like, did they look like they look now or did you have no marketing, no branding at that time? Absolutely nothing. I am a very scientifically-minded person. I am not an aesthetically-minded person. I cannot do design to save my life. So I was basically just, my focus at that point was just the practicality of the packaging, making sure that it was usable in terms of the like label design and the logo. I had a friend of mine who was a graphic designer who I reached out and was like, I'm launching this little skincare company. Will you design the labels and logo? And he was like, sure, I'll do it in exchange for skincare. And I was like, I have been a freelancer long enough that I'm gonna pay you actual American dollars. So I forced him to take my money, but that it was very, you know, I again, it was not something that I had grandiose plans for. It was just like, obviously I need a label because the FDA requires certain labeling requirements. And, you know, I don't necessarily want to handwrite each one. So that was sort of the extent of the thought that went into it at that point. And so I hate to pigeon you, I'm also a science-minded person. I went to school for engineering, but does this mean you completely undersold the product or did you price it in a way to make some pretty decent profit? I priced it, fortunately, thank God. I did price it to build in a profit and which I think people are surprised about because our products are really affordable. The price point is between $15 and $29 per product, which as far as, you know, I really do think that this is luxury skincare. It's just luxury at an affordable price. And that's a really pretty affordable price for really well-formulated high-quality products. The reason that we're still able to get a good profit margin is because we do it all ourselves. So it is formulated in-house. We manufacture it in-house. We do only direct to consumer. So we don't have all these different layers that are building in their own profit margins and eating away at our own. Got it. So you're not on Amazon or anything, you're just doing it all yourself? Wow. That's pretty impressive. And any particular reason why? Do you just wanna control the whole experience for the customer or is it really a function of cost also? I mean, there is definitely an element of cost that we would have to really kind of revisit our entire business model if we started doing a major retail push. But the primary reason is that the transparency is so important to Stradia that the way we communicate with our customers, letting them know exactly what goes into it, being very at a very granular level even like the exact manufacturing processes and things like that. And then beyond that, I want to let that science over marketing kind of approach apply to everything including some of the ingredients that have a really bad reputation unfairly, things like parabens that are like completely safe, actually really good to have in a product because they prevent bacteria molding yeast from growing and we use parabens. And it's important to us when people reach out with concerns that we can link them to all of the third party research, let them know exactly why they're safe and what's going on with them and why we use them. Whereas if they were just on a shelf in a mass market retailer, we can't expect a sales associate to have that level of detailed knowledge and that it may kind of just be shunted to the side because it has these things that to some people are less appealing but is really important to us that we sort of maintain that authenticity in not letting marketing sway us in either direction. So I think being able to keep those lines of communication open with our customers is really crucial. Yeah, that's super smart and very difficult to do and also kind of slow, it's a slow growth. At what point will it jump into all the science specifically around parabens and everything else later but at what point did you realize this is much bigger than just a side hustle? Like how are you just going to UPS every day or USPS with your arms full of goods? And then at some point you're like, look, I'm going here four times a day. This is getting, this might be a full time thing. What was the moment you might have realized it? That's so funny. I have an exact moment around USPS that I realized there was a mailbox near my apartment at the time and most mailboxes only, the door only opens enough to get a letter in but for whatever reason this was one where it opens all the way so I could get packages in. So I was stuffing that thing full of packages every day to the point where a couple months later they ripped it out and replaced it with one that only opens for letters. And at that point I was like, maybe this is a little bit bigger. I'm literally forcing them to upgrade their infrastructure. I did manage to keep doing this on the side of my full-time job for almost a year. And actually at the point that I left my job it got to the point where I literally, I would spend eight hours at my job, come home to eight hours of Stradia and then sleep and do Stradia all day, all weekend. And so when I left my full-time job it was I think six weeks before my 401K would have vested. And I was like, I can't even make it another six weeks. I will, I'm burning myself into the ground. Wow, good for you. It's funny, I wanna shout out USPS. My first company, same thing. It was just little by little. I was going once every two days and then it was like once a day. And I was in Boston and so it didn't, like he couldn't drive there. There wasn't any parking. You know, it was one of these situations where you're like, I'm literally backpack arms and just whatever I can carry from my apartment and then it was maybe like a five or six block walk. But the USPS, if you have a product that doesn't weigh very much is the cheapest. It'll give you the tracking. And so from an entrepreneurship perspective it is very cost effective. And as long as you're willing to deal with maybe a long line or you, at some point you just know when to go, like what times usually in the morning, then you're in great shape. And so the USPS I think, I think it's a breeding ground for a lot of companies like ours and a lot of, you know, entrepreneurship to get their start, which I think is great. Yeah, I totally agree. I think especially for light products, like you said, like ours, you know going through a carrier like UPS or FedEx would have been at least twice as expensive and would have really impacted the fundamental viability of the company. So yeah, I am extremely pro USPS. And then at one point, who was your first hire or I guess outside of the graphic designer who was someone you needed to bring on board right away? So let's see, I launched the company in, we opened the online storefront in May of 2016. My first hire was in January of 2018. So for that period, I was doing it all by myself. The July prior to that first hire, finally to my husband's great relief moved headquarters out of our apartment into this little windowless warehouse in unincorporated West Carson in Southern LA. And so I was working out of this warehouse and then my first hire was a production assistant to help me fill and label and get things out and just kind of be the man hours required to manufacture products. And I'm very happy to say I have a 0% turnover rate. Everyone I've ever hired still works for me. So she is now a production coordinator still working on the backend, but has been with me since then. What do you think the secret is to that? I mean, that's incredible. Thank you. Maybe you're just that likable. I don't know. I don't know you that well, but... I'm gonna say that's the secret. I have no idea. I think, you know, I really do think that your employees make or break the company, that the ability to grow relies on being able to trust the people you work with and empower them to take on parts of the business because if I were still doing it all myself and just kind of treating them as extensions of my own time and energy, I would not be able to get nearly as much done as I do. So I think really trusting my gut in the hiring process, but then also really, I try to let people be as autonomous as possible, try to really be, you know, I'm here, my door's always open, I'm here for questions, but like I hired you for a reason. And so I trust you to do the job that I hired you to do. Plus, I mean, we offer great benefits, you know, free healthcare, plenty of vacation time, unlimited sick, like, you know, just trying to really take care of our employees so that we get as much back as we give in. Do you have any hiring tips that you use? I have a few that I use that I found to be successful, but I'd love to hear if you have any things that you dig deeper on or maybe tips you've picked up along the way. Yeah, I don't know that I have a ton of tips because since I have not had to rehire anyone, I've actually only gone through the hiring process a few times. That's a good answer. Yeah, so I think, I mean, I really do have learned to trust my gut when I am meeting with someone and not kind of let the idea of a resume or whatever specific accomplishments override the feeling that I get of, would they be a good fit for this job? And then there are also sort of the anti-oppression ideas that I really try to take in because I think that prejudice really gets its claws in at the hiring level in a really insidious way. So things like, I don't have education requirements, unless it's like, if I were to hire a lawyer, it would be required that they had gone to law school. But outside of that, I don't let criminal background play a role. We don't have internships. So we're hiring from the broadest pool possible, just really trying to make sure that there are no unnecessary obstacles standing in the way so that we can get the widest pool possible. So that's another thing that I think is really important. That's really smart. It's crazy that that sounds progressive, but I'm the same way. It's like, it totally makes sense. It's like, you don't really need to go to college for certain things, you know? Exactly. And at the end of the day, everything's human. And so as long as you're a good human, generally speaking, you'll learn some of the tools or the tricks along the way. Let's jump into some of the science. And so as you were going through the discovery, right? So as you're like, let me dig into this. What are some of the things that just blew you away? Maybe you purchased a product and then you were like, I'm just going to do some research on this product. And then you realize like, what? They're putting this in this? Or maybe they're not putting these things. I'm just kind of get a sense of what were the aha moments or the wow moments along the way. One that jumped to my mind. Early on, when I was formulating and starting to think about pricing things out for sale and that kind of stuff, I needed a new exfoliant treatment, like an AHA. And I was in Sephora and I was like, heard good things about drunk elephant. I'm going to pick up their AHA serum. I forget what it's called and got to check out. And she said, all right, that'll be $128. And I was like, okay, thank you. Nevermind, remove from cart. And so then I went home. It's got a really short ingredients list and it seems well formulated. And then using the pricing that I currently had for all of those ingredients, which I can't speak to whether that is their pricing, but I can't imagine that they are paying more than I was at that point buying such small quantities. It was about a 16,000% markup from the raw ingredients. So obviously there's the packaging and there's so many, like there are so many other factors, like they're not just paying for raw ingredients and then handing them to you, but it is hard to imagine. They're paying another 16,000% worth of stuff. So that was a big eye opener for me. Yeah, I think what was most interesting to me was getting more involved in the industry, talking to a lot of other cosmetic chemists because it is really uncommon for a cosmetic chemist to a work for a single brand unless it's like L'Oreal and be involved in sort of the higher level branding, that they tend to be sort of hired to formulate a specific product. And what they are going for are things like stability, making sure that it's gonna last forever on the shelf, making sure that it really feels nice. It has a really nice sensorial impact, just kind of making sure that it's a positive experience. And one example I heard was when this chemist wanted to make this amazing shampoo and he made like 200 different rounds and tested them all on himself over the course of about like 50 days. And I was like, well, you're just, you are frying your hair. How could you possibly tell if this is actually having a good impact on your hair? You can tell the foam amount. You can tell if it smells nice. You can tell a lot of things. You can't tell what kind of impact it's actually having on your hair. So I think that is a real disconnect is that chemists are not necessarily looking for the biological impact. They're looking at the chemistry related fields of like on its own, is it a nice product? Not, is it really effective on your skin? Yeah, you see that a lot in business, which is interesting. I kind of understand why it happens, but when it comes to pricing, I mean, this is, I think my wife actually has the drunk elephant product upstairs. And this is the thing. It's like, I go upstairs or if I were to look and start asking questions, there's the whole range between like $20 products to $300 products. And there's obviously implied trust or this must be good. It's a million, you know, a million dollars. And I just think this is such a weird concept, but there's a vulnerability to makeup, right? There's a vulnerability to skincare. And so we all want to look good. And there's an inherent salient moment where the more I give the thought process is the more I'm gonna get. And unfortunately, I think too many companies, you know, play on that, which is kind of a bummer. Let's talk about parabens. What have you learned? Let's talk about parabens. Yeah. So parabens were the, there are kind of two main objections to parabens, both of which are completely unfounded. One of which is that they cause cancer that is built out of one study from the 90s in which they found parabens in breast cancer tissue, which sounds really scary. And one of the reasons that it's so hard to debunk these things to people who are not sort of deeply involved in science is that it's just hard to talk about scientific studies that there are these sound bites that sound really scary. But, you know, in the case of this parabens study, they did not see if parabens were found in non-cancerous tissue, you know, in a lot of cases, the things that we eat or consume or are surrounded by just end up in various places in our body. So if it is in both cancerous and non-cancerous tissue, then there is no correlation whatsoever. There was no causation found. It was just, we found this in this tissue. There was no causation found at all at best correlation. But as I mentioned, probably not even that because they weren't testing non-cancerous tissue. And then beyond that, they have, because it is such a controversial ingredient, it has been tested and tested and tested and tested and they've never found any negative impacts at the levels that's used in cosmetics. The other objection people have is that it's potentially an endocrine disruptor based on studies in which they inject rats with pure parabens. And that is the impact. And so, another thing that's really important to distinguish is that when you eat something or inject something, the whole point of that is for your body to break it down and integrate it into your living organs. When you put like your skin exists solely to keep your insides in and your outside out. So putting something on your skin, it's very unlikely to penetrate even into your bloodstream. There's no blood in your epidermis. In the top many layers of your skin, there's no blood vessels at all. So the idea of, there is just such a huge distinction between putting something on your skin and eating it in terms of how it gets into your body. And then also, parabens are always used at less than 1% in cosmetics. So, there's obviously a huge difference between something at 1% and something at 100%. Right. Does the paraben, is it like a preservative? Does it just stabilize the entire product? And so it gives it a longer shelf life. Is that why it's so useful? Yeah, it is a preservative. Preservatives are ingredients that prevent the growth of microbes, so bacteria, mold, and yeast. The reason preservatives are so important, the analogy I always give is if you were to make a smoothie and then stick it in your bathroom at room temperature for a year, would you then want to take a big swig? Probably not. So especially, skincare is at such high risk for bacterial and mold growth because we keep it in our bathroom. It's sort of room temperature. It's just such perfect food for microbes. And that's why preservatives are so tricky because if you want something that will kill the microbes, but not your own skin cells. So finding those specific, those very targeted ingredients is really hard. And that's also why some people say like, well, if there's any data about parabens, why not just use a different preservative? Well, a lot of those preservatives are really irritating, they're less effective, they have a really high sensitizing potential of like, making your skin more sensitive because it is really hard to find those really effective, but kind of inert ingredients, ingredients that are not gonna irritate your skin. Parabens are super non-irritating, probably the most of any commonly used preservative. And you can also use them at much lower levels than a lot of the newer preservatives. They're great. It's interesting, we've talked to a lot of founders on the podcast, we just had on Art of Sport founder, his name was Matthias, and so he was making a deodorant. And he kind of said the same thing, you know, he said like, there's a tremendous amount of, I don't wanna call it news or press or just theory or thought around why certain products shouldn't exist in skincare. And you almost have these two camps, it's like America, right? It's like, we're either this or we're that and that's it. And then, and he's like, some of these preservatives are actually really good and really important to the product and they make the product last and they make it so that you can feel your best throughout the day or to your point, there's actually no scientific research to suggest otherwise, like there's no harm. There's just theory. And then that theory gets propagated and then all of a sudden companies get spun out saying, yeah, we are totally paraben free. And now you're in this weird situation where it's almost like they're just going after a fear based model based on nuggets of theory, but it makes it tough, right? I would imagine it just makes it tough. And so how do you combat that? Just from a pure marketing play, or do you even combat it? Do you just say, look, we're going to use parabens? Yeah, I think because transparency is so important to us that we really, we want to let you know what we're putting in and why and we also want to let you know, like we're not going to be swayed by marketing trends. You can trust that how we formulate is based on what is absolutely best for your skin. And so it is, and to me, I really hate the idea of contributing to a culture of fear. It's an understandable fear, fear for your own health, for the health of your loved ones. But if I were to say, all right, we're not going to formulate with parabens, I'm saying that fear is valid when it isn't. It is not a reasonable fear, the fear of parabens. So it's just, it's important to me to make sure that even if we are going to lose some customers, you can't be all things to all people and we have really built our brand on scientific authenticity. And so maintaining that, even if it's going to lose us, some customers is really important to me. I think at a high level too, some people will say like the customer is always right, but sometimes they're totally not. And so just even a customer, if they, I mean, I had a product on time and the customer was like, we want you guys to use this. And so we said, if we use that, it's going to be significantly more expensive. Are you on board? We did a poll, they said, yes, great. So we purchased it, we made the product with that thing, didn't sell at all. And it's like, turns out you guys don't really care. You guys just want to make noise. So we're going to go back. And then, you know, all of a sudden it was okay. And I'm sure in this setting it's the same. It's like, if you don't use parabens, well then they're probably going to have to put it in the refrigerator or something. I'm not sure. Yeah, I think, I think you do have to really be aware of the vocal minority, you know, that the vast majority of Saudi customers, I think don't have strong feelings one way or the other about parabens. And so the few who are really speaking up strongly do not represent the bulk of our customer base. I like it. So let's talk about where you're at today. So what products do you have? How have you guys expanded? Let's jump into everything that you're doing today. Yeah, so we have eight, I'm counting. I think eight products sounds right. And yeah, I've formulated them all. We manufactured them all in-house right now because of COVID. I manufacture them all in-house because we don't want to have more than one person in the facility at a time. So I really have tried to, as I develop a new product, make sure that it's unique. You know, if there is a similar product that is well-formulated at an affordable price point, that's covered. I don't want to make another one. You know, I've had people ask about, are we going to make an oil-based cleanser? The product I use is affordable and really well-formulated and I love it. I couldn't make one better than that. So why would I make something that's just going to crowd an already crowded market? So all of our products I think are really unique. We just launched our retinol night cream a couple months ago. At this point, we launched maybe one product a year just because it's such a slow, you know. I formulate it. I go through 30, 40, 50 prototypes before I'm happy and each prototype is being sent to volunteers to test it on their skin because skin is a living organ and so unique to everyone that I can't assume my own experience will translate. So I want to get as much experience as possible. And then it has to go through stability testing, which takes three months and we have to, you know, get all the packaging and stuff designed and created and shipped. So it's a long process, but I also, that's important to me to maintain that trust that if Stradi launches a product, you know it's going to be really good. So that's really important. What I find fascinating about skincare is there's a part of it where you would think all I want it to do is work. So it should just work. But then there's two really important components, right? Where there's like, it's got to feel good and then it probably doesn't have to smell bad. And even though these two things have nothing to do with the end results, this is my engineering brain just going like, what does it matter what it feels like or smells like? But it's a huge component to, I guess, selling it and having people use it. Yeah, people will occasionally ask me for sunscreen recommendations. And I have ones that I like, but I always say the best sunscreen is one you'll actually use. So it doesn't matter if it's SPF 100, it's got all these great blockers, it's the newest coolest technology. If you find it greasy and you don't really want to put it on then it's not a good sunscreen for you because you're not going to use it. So there really is, you do really have to pay attention to the formulation making sure it's a pleasant sensorial experience. And that is really tricky for us because we don't use fragrance. So some of them are a little stinky because the natural ingredients can be stinky but trying to make sure mitigate that as much as possible without impacting the efficacy. But yeah, just making sure that it feels nice to use because it won't work if you're not going to put it on. And how are you guys growing the company? Are you raising capital? Are you going heavy into digital media, influencers? What's your trajectory for growth? We have been 100% cashflow funded since the beginning. I started the company with about $3,000 of my own savings and turned a profit in the second month and have just been running on cashflow since then. So, but we are actually embarking on our first round, our first raise, which is scary and overwhelming. Thank you. And another thing was that we didn't start paying for marketing or even really doing marketing until about a year and a half ago. So the first maybe three years were just 100% organic, 100% word of mouth, me trying to desperately keep up with this runaway train. So we do have a really strong organic customer base, especially on Reddit and Instagram people who just really like our products and share it with other people. But we are also now leaning more heavily, word of mouth is kind of the best way to sell skincare because even unlike other beauty products like makeup, makeup, you can swatch it, you can look at photos and see how it looks on other skin tones. Skincare is there's so little relevant information you can glean from photos through the internet. And so having someone say, I tried this and I liked it is far and away the most impactful way to convince a new customer to try it out. So yeah, we will never pay for a positive review but we are starting to give free products in exchange for honest reviews. Some people just don't like it, which is fine. Everyone's skin is different but trying to branch out into that sort of micro influencer world as well as just kind of, I think we have really unique content for our social media. I take people behind the scenes into the manufacturing process. We show you the ins and outs of all the ingredients. Like we really want to educate consumers into making the best skincare choices for themselves. So I think we also have that sort of like non-paid social media that is working for us. I love that. I wanna ask you a candid question here. Do you regret not marketing or do you not regret? Do you ever think if you had done it it might have saved you some, like you would have grew faster or no? I wouldn't have wanted to grow faster. The reason why I waited until now to do a raise is that I wanted to make sure we were 100% solid. It is gonna be so easy to accelerate from here. Whereas when I think back to 2016, 2017 when I was working crazy hours and in this friggin' 95 degree concrete box in West Carson trying to manufacture products by myself, like I think if we had had to accelerate faster than that, A, I would have lost my mind and B, I would have had to compromise on some of the really fundamental values of Stradia. I would have had to outsource manufacturing or potentially sell off part of the business or things like that. And so being able to stand here owning 100% of it having figured out the manufacturing process in a way that we can scale and keep it in house. And that I was able to make all those mistakes that I made in the process and learn from them without having the momentum of investor capital or whatever behind me that I could just make a mistake and be like, oh, try it again. I think that was super important. So I definitely would not have, if I could change it I would not have done anything differently on that front. I love that and thank you for being honest. I'm always curious. I've never gotten to ask somebody, but that was great. And then as it relates to fundraising, okay, so your fundraising in a COVID environment which to me is a kind of a good thing because as an investor, it makes it pretty obvious. Like is this entrepreneur great? COVID's the easiest litmus test. It's they're either surviving and killing it or they're dying. It's really straightforward. How do you even go about setting evaluation for a makeup, a skincare company? Is it like three times revenue? Is it, do you know? Is it an art and a science still? It's an art and a science. And I've also heard right now I'm working with a business consultancy that works with CPG companies specifically. So they're helping us with this whole process. But from people in the industry, I've heard and sort of anywhere between three and seven X revenue but that also depends on your size on all sorts of things. So I think it's really squishy, especially for a company like ours with where we have not ever had an evaluation event before. We, you know, it's all cash flow. It's all so theoretical. I don't know. My business advisor has a better idea and I am putting that trust into him. That's great. One thing I see all the time from CPG companies is they have this massive distribution deal. You know, and so this takes their valuation and just like, that's the difference between three to seven X. It's like, oh, Sephora has this order of a million things ready to rock. It's interesting because it sounds good but having to produce that much for a retailer of that size is really a beast that most people, you have to really know what you're doing to start to engage in something like that. Are you willing to share with us how much you're raising? Yeah, we're raising a million dollars in convertible notes. Perfect. I like it. Have you started or not yet? No. Well, no. No. I just finished my deck last week. So just starting the process. But yeah, so we're just starting the process. And honestly, I mean, this could just be my hubris that's gonna catch up to me very shortly. But I really do feel like I don't foresee a huge challenge in that race because we do, I feel like our numbers just speak to how much untapped potential we have. Like we were putting together our deck and Sloan, my marketing director was pulling some numbers for it. And I was like, wait, but this is crazy. Our acquisition, customer acquisition costs, payback five acts in the first 12 months since we get them. So whatever amount it costs us to get a new customer, we get back five times in the first 12 months from that customer, which is bonkers. And those numbers will come down as we scale, but it's still one of those things where like, if we have more capital to put into it, it's gonna pay back pretty directly. Yeah, you have the equation. That's really exciting. I remember, so I had a bow tie company and we were in the process of selling it and we were talking to a potential buyer and they said, so how much time do you guys spend on the phone taking orders? And we were like, what? We were like, zero. They're like, what about support calls? We're like, what support would someone need to, who's wearing it? Like the kid is strangled in the bow tie. Like what, we're like zero. They're like, you've never had a call. I'm like, so then it made me think, are you guys experiencing heavy call volumes? And they said 90% of their customer, sure enough, orders via, like gets the magazine in the mail and then orders via the telephone. And that's when the valuation in my head just skyrocketed because I was like, your customer's dying and mine is a young buyer and you need this segment of the market. I just always think about that story because it's something that you, we take a lot of things for granted, right? When you're in the business yourself, you take your customer acquisition costs for granted, the word of mouth that you've worked so hard to build, you take it all for granted until you start to do the equation and really look at what are the levers for scaling? And then that's when things get really exciting. And I think to your point, I mean, I personally invested in a company that they had already done a million dollars in revenue on their own, pre-raise. And I just thought, it says a lot about a founder who can do that and achieve that and stick to that growth, which is not a hockey stick. It's just sticking to little by little by little and a profit-focused approach. But that entrepreneur is someone to bet on. At least I think it's someone to believe in because they sort of understand the fundamentals, which a lot of entrepreneurs today chase vanity metrics and stuff. And that's, you know, that's okay too. But generally speaking, the fundamentals will survive. They'll stand the test of time. Yeah, and another thing I think, but both in terms of looking at the health of the company, but also in terms of sort of internal employee management and stuff is that metrics help to tell a story and unveil problems or good parts. They should never be the goal in and of themselves, you know? If you used to have a forex ROAS and now you have a 2X ROAS that says something that you can look into, you shouldn't be like, well, you know, we're getting a forex ROAS no matter what because there are ways to goose that metric that don't actually, maybe ROAS is not the right example because you are still getting that money back. But, you know, both in terms of like, I feel like any person who's worked in customer service or retail or anything has these of like, we need to sell X number of subscriptions or X number of credit cards or whatever and that that how many you're selling can be a good indicator of what's working and what's not. But if you try to sort of set a metric as a goal, you end up getting kind of cheap ways to get there that aren't necessarily great for the health of the company. Yeah, that's so true. I actually think about that a lot with podcasting and with anything on YouTube. It's like people, there's so many videos out there of all these growth hackers trying to like get their podcasts on like top 100 on the first day or get on YouTube like 10 million subscribers in like a year. And I've just concluded that at the end of the day there's an algorithm at work here that is probably smarter than all of us and has like the thing. And so I've just watched all these videos and what I've deciphered is for YouTube in particular is it basically decides when you're a creator. It basically says, oh, this person has uploaded, once, twice, three times a week for a year and by virtue of us being a creator community we are now gonna thank that channel for their time and start to boost them a little bit. And we've seen it with our channel which is so interesting, right? And it's just like so many people just spend so much time trying to growth hack where, you know they probably shut down after two years because they just get discouraged because they're chasing to your point like some of those vanity metrics that have nothing to do with the core business like having a conversation or like asking questions. I will see people on forums asking things like I got a hundred add to carts and to check out what's the problem and people are saying like, you know what's your shipping cost and like, you know all this stuff that, yeah that could be a problem but part of me is like, is your product good? You know, like I feel like the quality of the product is kind of sometimes almost thought of as an afterthought when that should be the core of the company. Yeah, I love that example. We get the question all the time like, hey I wanna start a podcast, what microphone do you have? And I'm like, the first question is what are you gonna talk about? The second question is who are you gonna have on and can you get a hundred of those people? And then you might wanna consider like a microphone or you know, it's like you're starting at the wrong thing. Yeah, it's like me thinking I can play basketball when I watch LeBron James, right? I'm like, oh yeah, it looks so easy. It makes it look so easy, yeah. Well listen, this has been a great conversation tell everyone where they can find you and your amazing products. We are all over the internet at Stratioskin, S-T-R-A-T-I-A-Skin.com or you know, all of our social handles are Stratioskin we sell online and that's it because as we've mentioned for Director Zimmer. So, and you can always email me with questions. My inbox is always open, it is A-L-L-I at Stratioskin.com. I love it, best of luck fundraising. I'm excited for you. I think you have it in the bag and honestly don't let any investor intimidate you. Don't let them do it. Don't let them take more of the company or any seats, just convertible now. Oh, absolutely not, this is my baby. No rates. Yeah. Well thank you so much, Ellie, I appreciate you coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me.